With virtually all electronic products, there has been a consistent if not increasing demand for new features, higher speed, more data, improved portability, etc. These demands have driven the development of electronic technology including reducing size, improving utility, or increasing performance of the integrated circuit devices contained within an ever-increasing range of electronic products such as cell phones, music players, televisions, or automobiles.
As electronic products have become an integral part of our daily lives, many electronic products with complex integrated circuits are commonly used often without end users' cognizance of the underlying electronic technology. Even for products that include obvious electronic technology, the technology itself is often taken for granted exacerbating the demands for improvements.
The conventional approach to heat removal from a die entails the use of a metal ring (known as a “stiffener”) attached to the perimeter region of the package substrate to act as the landing area for a heat spreader or heat sink to be attached subsequently. The heat spreader or heat sink is either attached by means of adhesives or by mechanically bolting it with fasteners.
In either case, the “stiffener” provides a flat landing surface, which prevents tilting or “cocking” of the heat spreader of heat sink, which would lead to an unreliable package and also cause potential mechanical damage to the die. The stiffener consumes considerable functional area on the package substrate.
One proven way to reduce cost is to use mature package technologies with existing manufacturing methods and equipments. Paradoxically, the reuse of existing manufacturing processes does not typically result in the reduction of package dimensions. Existing packaging technologies struggle to cost effectively meet the ever-demanding thermal requirements of today's integrated circuits and packages.
Despite the advantages of recent developments in integrated circuit manufacturing, there is a continuing need for improving packages with heat sinks particularly for functional area utilization, fabrication costs, and compatibility with other package designs.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit package system providing low cost manufacturing, improved thermal performance, and reduce the integrated circuit package dimensions.
In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is critical that answers be found for these problems.
Additionally, the need to save costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures, adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.